Back in March, I discussed how Twitter was entering the world of live-streaming with a third-party video app called Meerkat. With the popularity of live-streaming video already on the rise, Meerkat immediately exploded in popularity. However, the fact remained that Meerkat was launched by a third party and Twitter already had other plans for live-streaming video. Mere weeks after the launch of Meerkat, it was revealed that Twitter was already planning to launch their own live-streaming app called Periscope.

Twitter actually acquired Periscope in January, so live-streaming is something that has long been on their mind. Periscope launched at the end of March for iOS, giving Meerkat only a brief head-start in the Twitter live-streaming business. Upon the launch of Periscope, most news sources had only positive things to say. The interface was cleaner than Meerkat, there’s more interaction available between users, and most importantly, Periscope allows users to save streams and replay them later.

In response, Meerkat has been doing what it can to differentiate itself from Periscope and ensure that it’s still got a horse in the race. The people behind Meerkat have opened up Meerkat to other developers, transforming it into a platform that can be enhanced in various ways. Developed have already changed the Meerkat experience by adding automatic uploads of streams to YouTube, analytics tools, and better discovery for other users’ streams, among other updates. Periscope is currently in the top ten US social apps, while Meerkat is around #70, but these enhancements may help to give Meerkat a push.

It’s been a while since anyone has given much thought to Google Plus. Google’s attempt at a competitor to Facebook effectively crashed and burned, after not really providing users with anything that they didn’t already have from other existing social networks. It simply never offered anything that made people want to switch from one social network to the other. After Vic Gundotra, who focused largely on Google Plus during his tenure at Google, announced he was leaving the company last year, some news sources declared that Google Plus was effectively dead in the water.

However, Google has recently announced an overhaul of the Google Plus interface, which is drifting further away from a Facebook clone and actually seems to be emulating aspects of Pinterest. Google Plus’s newest feature is called the Collections tab, which allows users of Google Plus to group similar posts into sections, so that users can easily organize all of the things that they are interested in. These Collections can be shared publicly, privately, or with a specific group of people.

While Google Plus may have massively decreased in use, there were still plenty of people that were clinging to it. Roughly 6.6 million users made public posts in 2015, although that is only representative of 0.3 percent of all Google Plus accounts. However, Google was paying attention to what their loyal users were doing on the social network. These observations ultimately led to the launch of Collections, which is now available on the web and Android platforms and should be available for iOS in the near future.

Facebook, ever-expanding, is trying to provide its users with better ways to call their friends and see who’s calling them. They started out last week by releasing a caller-ID app called Hello, which functions by connecting public phone numbers to Facebook profiles, so that users of Hello can have a better idea of who might be calling them if they don’t recognize the number. The feature allows users to block calls, search for businesses, and connect profile pictures and information to the people who call you. The app is only available to Android users, due to limitations on how apps can respond to phone calls on iOS, but it’s been getting positive responses thus far.

Through Facebook Messenger, Facebook has also chosen to allow their users to have another way to make calls, by adding a free VOIP video call service, which uses cellular or Wi-Fi connections. Video calling has been very popular in the past few years, especially with apps such as Skype and FaceTime. These video calls are extremely easy to make, as they only require the push of a button through the Facebook Messenger app and for both parties to have a stable 3G, 4G, or Wi-Fi connection.

Some news sources worry that Facebook Messenger’s video call feature will cause more awkward and uncomfortable social media exchanges, because there is not currently an ability to choose to opt out entirely from video calls or to only allow a select group of people to send you video calls. Other news sources see this feature as a transitional point that may move Facebook closer to competing with live broadcasting services such as Meerkat and Periscope. Regardless, Facebook’s move to make themselves more integral with phone calls and video calls will likely overall be to their benefit.

Though Twitter is not primarily known for its messaging services, there has always been the ability to Direct Message your friends via Twitter, essentially allowing you to send something in private rather than adding it to Twitter’s usual public forum. In order to do this, however, you had to be following that person and they had to be following you. Presumably, this was to reduce the potential SPAM that could come along with fake accounts and advertisers who might try to send out mass Direct Messages to users willy-nilly. As of this week, Twitter is no longer requiring users to be connected in this way to send Direct Messages to one another.

The new feature is something that users can choose to opt into, in order to prevent Twitter users from opening themselves up to potential SPAM. This setting was actually rolled out to a handful of users back in 2013, but it’s only become available as a widespread feature as of this week. This update is likely in an effort to compete with the messaging features of other apps and social networks, such as Snapchat and WhatsApp. Twitter believes that improvements to private messaging will create a social network experience that is more whole.

However, this update has not come without its criticism. Initial criticism came from an apparent mistake that made the feature opt-out instead of opt-in, although this was quickly fixed. Additionally, some believe that Direct Messages defeat the purpose of Twitter, considering the appeal of Twitter focuses on the fact that everything is part of a large, public conversation. Other criticisms believe that opening up one’s Direct Messages will make it easier for people to wind up subject to abuse and harassment, a problem that Twitter has already been dealing with in spades.

The rate at which Facebook seems to be constantly growing and changing is truly astounding. It seems that rarely a week goes by without a new feature being rolled out by the social network. Over the course of the past couple of months, Facebook has released a number of new and interesting features, as well as separate applications that are intended to perform specific functions. One way that Facebook changed things up recently, for instance, is by allowing people to use Facebook Groups to sell things, in a way similar to Craigslist, but with less anonymity.

Another interesting thing that Facebook can now be used for is serving divorce papers via Facebook messages. In this situation, it’s not exactly a feature that was added by Facebook. It’s actually been a court ruling, which allows people to serve legal paperwork such as divorce papers via Facebook, depending on the circumstances. Whether or not this can be considered legal would have to be decided on a state-by-state basis, but New York has confirmed that it can be done.

Outside of the Facebook platform itself, Facebook has been launching some interesting apps that allow users to perform different functions. Riff is an app that allows friends to create collaborative videos by adding clips together; the videos that are created can be easily shared through Facebook and the contributors will automatically be tagged. Another app that Facebook just launched is called Scrapbook, which is effectively a way for children under the age of thirteen to have a Facebook presence, allowing parents to tag photos of their children. Facebook is currently looking into ways to allow a child’s Scrapbook to be upgraded to an official Facebook page once they turn thirteen.

As I discussed last week, Facebook Messenger is going through some pretty big changes right now. With the addition of third-party support, Facebook is hoping to transform Facebook Messenger into its own platform. Yesterday, they extended this idea by launching Messenger.com, a dedicated web presence for Facebook Messenger, separating the messaging functions from the News Feed, notifications, and potentially other distracting information that usually might appear on Facebook.

Facebook users will still be able to send messages from Facebook.com as usual, but Messenger.com has been established as a chat website for those who may need to chat but don’t want to wind up endlessly clicking on the distracting social media content that can often present itself on Facebook. Currently, the features on Messenger.com are still somewhat limited. Users cannot yet send audio messages or send photos directly from their webcams, but it is likely that Messenger.com will continue to expand.

It’s also been confirmed that Messenger.com will allow users to interact via the third-party applications that were discussed last week. Though Messenger.com is only available to English-speaking users right now, Facebook plans to launch the platform internationally over the course of the next few weeks. Interestingly, Messenger.com does not presently feature any advertisements, but one can assume that this is likely to change in the future.

During the Facebook F8 conference last month, Facebook made a number of announcements about the future of Facebook and the ways that things will be changing throughout the year. One of the most interesting and buzzed about changes that apparently will occur is the fact that Facebook Messenger will now be able to support third-party apps and services, so that the Messenger service that Facebook has been developed can be customized in all sorts of different ways.

Facebook Messenger is used by more than 500 million people, so it’s no surprise that Facebook has made it their goal to make Messenger more useful. By opening up Messenger to third-party app creators, the possibilities are limitless. Since Facebook recently allowed friend-to-friend payments to be made in Messenger, it’s likely that there are a lot of interesting ways that Messenger can be expanded for commerce, with businesses potentially making it easier to purchase goods and services through their Messenger app.

The first third-party apps that have launched for Messenger have been simple sticker apps, as well as some small ones for audio and video clips. However, there are plenty of potential options for the future. People could send animated GIFs to their friends, have their messages sung out loud to them, play games, or make purchases all through the same Messenger app. Since the transformation is so recent, the sky is still the limit for what could come from Facebook Messenger’s evolution into a full-fledged platform.

Instagram has recognized that its users are very interested in making collages. There are plenty of third-party apps that allow for this very function such as Pic Stitch, PhotoGrid, InstaCollage, and more. After recognizing that one in five monthly active users on Instagram had used one of these collage apps at least once, Instagram decided that they would launch their own collage-making application, hoping to make the experience easier and more efficient for their user base.

The app that they have launched is called Layout and it’s trying to make an effort to separate itself from the herd of similar collage applications. While most of these third-party collage apps start out by offering empty grids where pictures can be arranged, Layout is different in that it has you choose the pictures that you will be using first, and then automatically arranges the photos for you, once you have selected a collage style. From there, it is easy to replace photos, resize them, or move them into different positions.

Many news sources are already comparing Layout to Hyperlapse, which quickly became the defining app for creating timelapse videos. From the way it looks, Layout could similarly become the definitive collage app, even amidst all of these other competing apps. Considering the success of Hyperlapse, it is likely that Layout will also have success, because of its direct affiliation with Instagram and its overall ease of use. The app launched for iOS on Monday and is expected to be released for Android in the coming months.

In various ways, Facebook has competed with most of the major online forces around. Their social media functions compete with Twitter and Snapchat; their search functions compete with Google and Bing; their ownership of Instagram even pits them against a number of other image and video sharing services. Now, it appears that Facebook is ready to go up against payment services such as PayPal, as they have just officially announced that Facebook Messenger is adding a friend-to-friend payment service that is free of charge.

Using this feature is fairly simple. A user simply needs to add their debit card information in Facebook Messenger’s setting sections. Then, you select the ‘$’ icon in Facebook Messenger and tap ‘pay’. From there, any user can send any amount of money directly into their friend’s bank account. Facebook has plenty of experience with transactions and mobile payments through their apps and games, so the security of one’s debit card information won’t have to be something to worry about.

Facebook’s goal is to offer this feature as a convenience. They recognize that people are already going to be logging time on Facebook, so why should they have to spend time adding friends to another application like Venmo (an app running similar features, offered by PayPal) when they can already use their existing list of Facebook friends? Though it’s too early to tell if this feature will be the death of other payment apps, Facebook certainly has the upper hand here.

Over the past few years, live-streaming has become immensely popular. This is largely thanks to the popularity of Twitch, which is a live streaming video platform that initially focused on streaming video game playthroughs and e-sports, though its brand has continued to expand. Amazon’s purchase of Twitch in September 2014 only helped to expand the brand’s popularity. Thus, it’s unsurprising that live-streaming has been on the brains of many people since Twitch’s surge in viewership, which has turned it into one of the top 200 visited websites on the Internet.

A couple weeks ago, Meerkat was launched as a live-streaming video app that works directly in conjunction with Twitter. Though Meerkat is an independent app with no official connections to Twitter, it uses Twitter to allow people to live-stream video or record video to be scheduled for a later tweet. As Meerkat runs live-streaming video, other users are able to engage the user’s Twitter account with replies, which appear at the bottom of the video feed. When the live-stream is completed, its default setting is to be ephemeral and disappear, although the streamer has the option of saving the video to their phone’s memory.

In the weeks since its launch, Meerkat has become extremely popular, though only time will tell if it will merely be a passing fad or if it will reach the same level of popularity as Twitch. In any case, Twitter has reportedly been in talks to purchase another live-stream app known as Periscope. Periscope has not yet launched, but beta testers have described the app as similar to Meerkat. If Twitter purchases Periscope and launches it, they could potentially be burying Meerkat before it has a chance to truly shine. At any rate, it’s definitely likely that live-streaming is going to be the next big thing for Twitter.